Symposium on Digital Formations and Chinese Experiences:

Creation, Appropriation, and Circulation

June 12 - 13, 2017Penn Wharton China Center, Beijing

AGENDA

June 12

10:00am - 10:15am

10:15am - 12:00pm

1:15pm - 3:15pm

12:00pm - 1:15pm

3:15pm - 3:30pm

Welcome Remarks

Panel 1 State and Legacy Media Meet Digital Platforms

Panel 2Digital Activism and Playful Nationalism

Lunch

Coffee Break

Zhongdang Pan, University of Wisconsin-MadisonLu Wei, Zhejiang UniversityGuobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania

Chair: Zhongdang Pan, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Shaohua Guo, Carleton College “‘Occupying’ the Internet: State Media and the Reinvention of Official Culture Online”

Jianguo Deng, Fudan University“Discursive Wars: How ‘Regaining Lost Influence’ and ‘Doing New Media’ Help Chinese News Media Negotiate Press Censorship – A Case Study of the Mobile News App The Paper”

Francis Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong“Institutional Reconfiguration and Media Loops in the Integrated Mediascape: A Case Study of the Chief Executive Election in Hong Kong”

Chair: Lu Wei, Zhejiang University

Fangzhou Ding, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences“The Symbolic Activist in Digitally Enabled Social Movements: The Case of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement”

Zhou Kui, Chinese University of CommunicationWang Zhe, Zhejiang University of Media and Communication,

“Playful ‘Nationalism’: The Double Articulation of Game Playing and National Identity Online”

June 13

10:00am - 11:45am

1:15pm - 2:30pm

Panel 4Emotion, Reason, and Incivility in Online Discourse

Panel 5Labor, Market, and Digital Commodity

Chair: Jack Qiu, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Jia Dai, Tsinghua University“Emotions Outweigh Reasoning: An Analysis of Weibo Posts on the ‘PM2.5’ Issue”

Shiwen Wu, Wuhan UniversityStephanie Na Liu, Sichuan University

“Contentions on the Internet and Shifting Interests: Interest and Reason in China’s New Media Events”

Yunya Song, Hong Kong Baptist University“The Viral Spread of Incivility Online: Tracking the Discussion of Hong Kong - Mainland China Conflict on Weibo”

Chair: Guobin Yang, University of Pennsylvania

Linchuan Jack Qiu, Chinese University of Hong Kong“Circuits of Labor and China’s Digital Working Class”

Jing Wang, Rutgers University“It’s Not Just Internet Plus Finance: The Internet and New Power Relations in China’s Financial Market”

Yizhou Xu, University of Wisconsin-Madison“Digitizing Death: Virtual Commemoration of Joss Paper Rituals”

Elaine Yuan, University of Illinois at Chicago“Alibaba’s Bazaar: Constructing Online Market”

11:45am - 1:15pm

2:30pm

Lunch

Concluding Discussions

3:30pm - 4:45pm

Panel 3Sounds and Clouds of the Digital

Chair: Francis Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Jinying Li, University of Pittsburgh“Grey Clouds: The Media Ecology of Eco-Apps in China”

Adel-Jing Wang, Zhejiang University“The Acoustic Uncanny and the Problem of Too Many Worlds in the Digital Age”

BIOGRAPHIES

Jia Dai 戴佳 is an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, China. Her research interests include media sociology, new media and social transformation, and environmental communication. Her published research includes articles in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism Practice, Asian Journal of Communication, Chinese Journal of Communication, and many Chinese journals.

Deng Jianguo 邓建国 is associate professor at the School of Journalism in Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His academic interests include China’s changing journalism in social media era, Chinese and Western ideas of communication. He has published widely in these areas in Chinese and English. He was a visiting scholar at the School of Journalism, Columbia University in 2013-2014. Mr. Deng has an M.A. (2000) in American Studies from East China Normal University, and a Ph.D. (2007) in communication studies from Fudan. Before entering the academia, he was assistant editor-in-chief of Fudan-Yale Global Online magazine and and journalist with newspaper Shanghai Daily.

Fangzhou Ding 丁方舟 is currently an Assistant Research Professor in the Institute of Journalism at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. Her research areas cover digital activism, news sociology, and global communication. Dr. Ding has published articles in the Journal of Journalism & Communication, Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication, Journal of Zhejiang University (Humanities and Social Sciences), Shanghai Journalism Review, etc. She got her Ph.D. in Communication from the Zhejiang University. She was the 2014-2015 Fulbright visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication at University of Pennsylvania.

Shaohua Guo 郭绍华 is an Assistant Professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures at Carleton College. Her research interests include cultural studies of new media, visual culture, and literary studies. Her work has appeared in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Media, Culture & Society, Journal of Contemporary China, Chinese Literature Today, and International Journal of Cultural Studies, among others.

Francis L. F. Lee is Professor and Head of Graduate Division at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests reside in public opinion, journalism, political communication, and media and social movements. He is the author of Talk Radio, the Mainstream Press and Public Opinion in Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 2014), and lead author of Media, Social Mobilization and Mass Protests in Postcolonial Hong Kong (Routledge, 2011).

Jinying Li is an Assistant Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She studies East Asian cinema, animation, and digital culture in transnational/trans-media contexts. Trained as a scientist before becoming a media scholar, Jinying is interested in the interplay between techno-science and screen cultures, and her research focuses on the question of how digital technologies transformed global media ecology as well as the forms and aesthetics of moving images. Her current book project, titled Global Geekdom, interrogates various aspects of anime and otaku culture as the manifestation of a fast rising global geekdom movement under the techno-economic conditions of the information age. Another project she has been engaged with is examining piracy culture in contemporary China as a case study of media leakage in networked information systems. Her essays on anime, piracy, digital media, and Asian films have been published in Mechademia, The International Journal of Communication, and Film International. Jinying is also a filmmaker who has worked on animations, feature films, and documentaries. Two documentary series that she produced, Fashion Expression (2011) and Creative Future (2012), were broadcasted nationwide in China through Shanghai Media Group (SMG).

Stephanie Na Liu (Ph.D., City University of Hong Kong, 2015) is a lecturer in the College of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University, China. She researches in political communication, international communication, new media events, sociology of news, and media representation of citizenship rights. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Journalism Studies, Policy & Internet, Journal of Communication Research and Practice (传播研究与实践), Chinese Journal of Journalism & Communication (国际新闻界), and Journalism Bimonthly (新闻大学) and so on.

Zhongdang Pan (Ph.D., Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990) is a Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on mediated communication in politics and public life. He has published research on news framing and its effects, significance of political talk, implications of perceptions of media effects, news production and media effects on values in China, and civic implications of the Internet in China.

Jack Linchuan Qiu is Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he serves as deputy director of the C-Centre (Centre for Chinese Media and Comparative Communication Research). His publications include Goodbye iSlave (Univ of Illinois Press, 2016), World’s Factory in the Information Age (Guangxi Normal Univ Press, 2013), Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009), and Mobile Communication and Society (co-authored, MIT Press, 2006), some of which have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean. He is on the editorial boards of 12 international academic journals, including six indexed in the SSCI, and is Associate Editor for Journal of Communication. He also works with grassroots NGOs and provides consultancy services for international organizations.

Yunya Song 宋韵雅 (Ph.D. in Communication, City University of Hong Kong) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Director of the Applied Communication Research Lab in the School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University. She works in the areas of global communication, computer-mediated networks, and new media. Her research has appeared in, amongst others, The International Journal of Press/Politics, Computers in Human Behavior Media, Culture & Society, International Communication Gazette, Journalism Studies, Public Relations Review, and The Proceedings of Rank A+ Computer Science Conference. She is editor of Communication & Society. At HKBU, she received the 2017 President’s Award for Outstanding Young Scholar.

Adel-Jing Wang is a sound studies scholar, art anthropologist, and sound event organizer. Academically trained in performance studies, she is an associate professor in the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University. Her book Sound and Affect: An Anthropology of China’s Sound Practice (Zhejiang University Press, 2017) explores the concepts of freedom, affect, and sound through anthropological research on China’s sound culture. She is published in academic journals including Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, Journal of Popular Music Studies, Representation, and International Review of Qualitative Research. Her current research focuses on sound studies, sensory studies, performance studies, and anthropological methods. Artistically, she works primarily with field-recordings. In January 2015, she founded The Sound Lab at College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University. Her current book project is entitled “Tenuous Resonance: China’s Sound Practice and Ideas” (Bloomsbury 2019). Her personal website is: www.sonorouspresence.org.

Jing Wang is a doctoral candidate at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Her research explores the connections between communication technologies and social changes in financial contexts. Jing’s dissertation studies how the integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in financial industries has reconfigured the relations between the state, financial market, and the emerging investment class in Chinese society. Using mixed methods, Jing’s work draw on various fields including science & technology studies (STS), political economy, economic sociology, and media and cultural studies. Jing received her M.A. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, and B.A. in Communication from Communication University of China. Prior to her graduate studies in the U.S., Jing worked in media and marketing research industries in Beijing and Toronto, Canada.

Wang Zhe 王喆 is Assistant Professor at Zhejiang University of Media and Communication, Ph.D. Candidate at National Chengchi University in Taiwan. Her research interests are social psychology for new media and STS.

Joe (Yizhou) Xu is an M.A. candidate in Media & Cultural Studies at UW-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts. His research interest lies in the digital media consumption and production among Chinese youths in urban spaces. Prior to UW-Madison, Joe was a documentarian and broadcast journalist based in Beijing working for new agencies including CBS News, National Public Radio (NPR), and Swiss TV. He is one of the producers of the feature-length documentary The People’s Republic of Love. He also produced documentary-short for Swiss TV about online cemeteries in China that this project is based upon.

Lu Wei 韦路 is a Professor and Associate Dean in the College of Media and International Culture and the Director of the Institute of Journalism at Zhejiang University. His research interests include the social shaping and consequences of new media technologies. Dr. Wei is currently a Vice President of China New Media Communication Association and a steering committee member of Chinese Association of Public Opinion Research. He serves as the managing editor of Communication and the Public and an editorial board member of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Shiwen Wu 吴世文 (Ph.D., Wuhan University, 2012) is an associate professor in School of Journalism and Communication in Wuhan University, China. He was a visiting scholar at Annenberg School for Communication (UPENN) from September 2015 to September 2016. Shiwen has published his book New Media Events: Framing Construct and Discourse Practicing. He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Studies in Communication, Sciences Journalism & Communication (新闻与传播研究) and Modern Communication (现代传播).

Guobin Yang is a Professor of Communication and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication and Department of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include The Red Guard Generation and Political Activism in China (2016), The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online, and Dragon-Carving and the Literary Mind (2013). He is the editor of Media Activism in the Digital Age (with Victor Pickard, forthcoming), China’s Contested Internet (2015), The Internet, Social Media, and a Changing China (with Jacques deLisle and Avery Goldstein, 2016), and Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China (with Ching-Kwan Lee, 2007).

Dr. Elaine Yuan is an associate professor in the Communication Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research focuses on how various social relations and institutions are mediated by new and emerging forms of digital, social, and mobile media. She applies hermeneutic, historical, and comparative perspectives to examining issues of privacy, community, nationalism, activism, and online markets as mediated social practices. She has researched extensively on the subjects of new media communication, activism, and social change in China. Her critical cultural perspectives are empirically rooted in diverse and innovative research methods such as digital ethnography, network analysis, and big data approaches. Dr. Yuan’s research has appeared in many leading journals in the field of communication such as Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Information, Communication, & Society, Journal of Electronic and Broadcasting Media, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journalism Studies. Her research projects have been supported by the U.S. Social Science Research Council, the U.S. 21st Century Institute, the UIC Institute of Public Civic Engagement, and the Institute for the Humanities. Some of her recent works can be found on www.uic.edu/~eyuan.

Zhou Kui 周逵 is an associate professor at Communication University of China. His research interests are visual communication, new media and social mobilization, and philosophy of technology.

Organized by the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania in collaboration with the Department of Communication Studies, University

of Wisconsin-Madison and the College of Media and International Culture, Zhejiang University

Sponsoring journal: Communication and the Public